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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 NEW DELHI 001113
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/10/2015
TAGS: PRELPGOVPTERINPKINDOPAK
SUBJECT: NATWAR SINGH TO RESTART INDO-PAK DIALOGUE IN
ISLAMABAD
REF: A. NEW DELHI 909
¶B. NEW DELHI 586
¶C. 04 NEW DELHI 7494
Classified By: DCM Robert O. Blake, Jr. for Reasons 1.4 (B, D)
¶1. (C) Summary: FM Natwar Singh's February 15-17 trip to
Islamabad will be an opportunity for the two governments to
re-engage at a high level after a hiatus of nearly two
months, during which the most important bilateral stories --
Islamabad's request for World Bank assistance to resolve the
Baglihar Dam impasse and the January LOC shelling incidents
-- were largely negative, and when even the Pakistani cricket
team's much-heralded February 25-April 18 tour of India has
run into political hiccups. For New Delhi, Pakistan has
taken a back seat to other regional crises in the past month:
the Tsunami, Nepal, the SAARC summit postponement, and
resulting tensions with Bangladesh. Although Mission
contacts expect no major breakthroughs from Natwar's visit,
they are upbeat about the resumption of high-level dialogue,
given the opportunities the two sides lost to engage in Dhaka
and the interregnum of the back-channel after NSA JN Dixit's
death. In addition to setting dates for Composite Dialogue
(CD) and technical meetings through the summer, the Foreign
Minister will likely take up concessions the GOI has made
regarding the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. We
also continue to hear rumors of an accord on the
Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus. End Summary.
Overcoming Recent Setbacks on LOC, Baglihar
-------------------------------------------
¶2. (C) Natwar Singh's February 15-17 trip to Islamabad --
the first senior bilateral interaction since the December
27-28 Foreign Secretaries meeting -- will occur after several
setbacks in the Indo-Pak relationship. Islamabad's request
to the World Bank for a neutral arbiter to resolve the
Baglihar Dam impasse (Ref A) and the January 18 and 20
cross-LOC shelling incidents (Ref B) have receded into the
background, but in the absence of the vigorous diplomatic
activity of last fall, these negative episodes have
introduced a note of pessimism into the commentary here on
the Indo-Pak relationship.
¶3. (C) Now that the GOP has initiated the dispute resolution
process to address the Baglihar Dam impasse, Mission contacts
agree that New Delhi and Islamabad should let the process
play itself out. Former Director of the Observer Research
Foundation's (ORF) Pakistan Centre Sushant Sareen explained
that Baglihar could be addressed on its technical aspects,
unlike the majority of bilateral issues that would require
political compromise to resolve. Commodore Uday Bhaskar,
Deputy Director of the MOD-affiliated Institute for Defense
Studies and Analysis, agreed with this perspective, as did
International Centre for Peace Initiatives Director Karan
Sawhny.
¶4. (C) Senior GOI officials seem willing to continue to give
Islamabad the benefit of the doubt regarding the recent
shelling incidents. ORF Senior Pakistan Fellow Wilson John,
usually a hawk on Musharraf, speculated to Poloff that the
shelling was probably not an "official" act, but more likely
the work of "spoilers" carried out either by Kashmir-focused
terrorists or by low-ranking officers of the Pakistan Army
acting unilaterally. IDSA's Bhaskar added that India could
"absorb" such incidents "to a point," and at the current time
the GOI valued the peace process far more than retaliation.
¶5. (C) It is reflective of the current Indo-Pak malaise that
even the much-awaited India tour of the Pakistani cricket
team has become bogged down in wrangling over one of the
proposed match sites, with Islamabad objecting to playing in
Ahmedabad for "security reasons," which has been read here as
a slap at the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat. Indian
observers expect the tour to go on, but the politicization of
South Asia's most popular sport -- which last year played
such an important role in fomenting mutual goodwill -- has
cast a small shadow over the generally upbeat atmosphere
around Indo-Pak people-to-people ties.
Opportunity for the GOI to Refocus on Pakistan
--------------------------------------------- -
¶6. (C) Natwar's trip comes after the GOI has directed much
of its foreign policy focus elsewhere for the past several
weeks. Several regional crises -- the December Tsunami and
its aftermath, the constitutional coup in Nepal, the
deteriorating security situation in Bangladesh, and the GOI
decision to pull the plug on the SAARC summit -- have
diverted attention away from Pakistan. ORF's Wilson John
joked to Poloff that, "For once, the border with Pakistan is
among India's least concerns." An MEA Joint Secretary echoed
this perspective, quipping that India's deteriorating
relations elsewhere in South Asia have made Indo-Pak issues
look good. It took only days for the LOC shelling incidents
and the Baglihar Dam impasse to disappear from India's major
daily newspapers. Against this background, Natwar's
high-profile trip is expected to generate the momentum needed
to begin the next round of CD talks.
Prospect for Manmohan Trip in March
-----------------------------------
¶7. (C) One agenda item certain to be on the Islamabad agenda
will be the GOP's invitation to PM Manmohan Singh to visit
Pakistan in March. Coming on the heels of Natwar's trip, and
given the positive read-out of PM Singh's meeting with
Pakistani PM Shaukat Aziz in November (Ref C), we expect a PM
Singh visit would be well received in both countries. That
being said, our MEA interlocutors have carefully stuck to a
"one step at a time" approach to their bilateral engagements,
and have not committed either way on the PM's travel. The
outcome of ongoing state elections and the status of economic
reform efforts in the budget session of Parliament could be a
factor here.
Clearing the Way for Pipeline Discussions
-----------------------------------------
¶8. (C) The Indian Cabinet on February 9 authorized Petroleum
Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar to pursue energy deals with
Burma, Bangladesh, Iran and Pakistan. This announcement
represents a GOI climb-down from the MEA's prior insistence
on Pakistan extending MFN to India and/or providing transit
rights for Indian trade to Afghanistan as a prerequisite to
the pipeline. In a short conversation looking ahead to
Natwar's trip, MEA Joint Secretary (Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Iran) Arun K. Singh indicated to PolCouns that this pipeline
breakthrough would be a deliverable for the Foreign
Minister's trip to Islamabad. On February 11, Petroleum
Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar told the Ambassador that an
agreement was "not going to happen easily, quickly, or
smoothly." The Energy and Resources Institute's (TERI) RK
Batra indicated to us that numerous pipeline issues remain,
including financing, physical protection, and possible ILSA
restrictions.
Future of Composite and Technical Talks
---------------------------------------
¶9. (C) Natwar's trip should yield a schedule for this
Spring's round of bilateral talks, although it would be too
soon to expect an announcement of an accord on any of the
Composite Dialogue agenda items (Wullar Barrage, Siachen
Glacier, Promotion of Friendly Exchanges, Terrorism and Drug
Trafficking, Sir Creek, and Confidence Building Measures in
Jammu and Kashmir) or the bilateral technical talks (nuclear
CBMs, conventional military CBMs, and the Khokhrapar-Munnabao
rail link). One major issue that may be ripe for a
breakthrough is the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus route.
¶10. (C) J/S Singh told us on February 10 that negotiations
are continuing, and remarked that "we're close but not quite
there." Veteran journalist and Track-Two practitioner Kuldip
Nayyar was convinced the bus service would begin within the
year. Likewise, the "Hindustan Times's" Pramit Pal Chaudhuri
told us that MEA sources have been promising "something big"
for the Natwar trip, and suggested that the bus was it.
International Centre for Peace Initiatives Director Karan
Sawhny suggested that even incremental movement in any
bilateral discussions would be critical, to ensure that
Islamabad continued to find value in ongoing engagement. A
more detailed examination of Indian predictions for Indo-Pak
relations in 2005 follows septel.
Next Up: Trade Talks
--------------------
¶11. (C) In the next scheduled major bilateral interaction,
New Delhi will host expert-level trade talks on February 22.
There are a host of bilateral trade issues, including
normalizing the trade flows that now transit third-countries,
intellectual copyright issues, and preparations for the South
Asia Free Trade Area that is to begin next year. Further
details on this event will be addressed septel.
Comment
-------
¶12. (C) Several recent opportunities have passed for Indian
and Pakistani officials to interact since the Foreign
Secretaries met last December, including the postponed SAARC
SIPDIS
summit, and much of the news in the meantime has been
unhelpful to the peace process. If Natwar's trip takes place
as scheduled and both capitals see it as successful, that
could herald another 6-9 months of diplomatic engagement
which would be as important as the continued LOC cease-fire
and possible further reduction in Kashmir-oriented terrorism.
The fact that his trip is being heralded as "the first
bilateral visit of an Indian Foreign Minister to Pakistan in
17 years" demonstrates the difficulty the Indian media has in
accurately describing so-called milestones in Indo-Pak
diplomacy, given last year's hectic calendar of meetings.
However, the run-up to Natwar's trip is demonstrating the
new, positive dynamic of Indo-Pak relations, with each senior
level encounter creating pressure on the bureaucracy to
generate deliverables of some sort -- and that in turn
helping to ratchet the two sides further away from conflict.
MULFORD